Monthly Archives: January 2014

Above: doing some environment studies, listening to Fen Zhu Design’s awesome tutorials. A small bird and some flowers from the weekly sketch jam, themed on “Illusion”. A photo study of a spider (wanted to paint something with a lot of happy colors), and a skull study done tonight. I wanna learn how to “block” in values and to draw those delicate brush strokes, playing with “soft” and “hard” edges. Enjoy!

Two photo studies from tonight, and some skull studies. I have more skull studies than this, but just too lazy to take photos or scan them in right now.

I didn’t have time to draw this weekend. Just cleaning my apartment and packing stuff for the move next week. Damn it just takes so much time to get everything packed into boxes, and to clean this mess…Had a beer with my collages on at Tarsier on Friday. Not sure if my contract will be prolonged or not, so took my chances and had a goodbye-beer just in case, haha. We ended up at a night club and I walked home at 03 in the morning. Freezing winter and fucking snow. I knew my feet were touching the ground, but I couldn’t feel them…

Been reading some really nice sketch books over at CA.org lately. I may have stopped posting over there, but i still browse around sometimes. Feel really pumped about art right now. I just wanna draw, and paint and study and find out how good I can get at this. I don’t really want an artist job or to become a concept artist, I just wanna create and improve and discover everything there is about art! Thinking about how to approach my learning in a smart way. My friend A emailed me the material they use for concept art school. It’s not a full plan or anything, just a brief summary about what they learn and what kind of assignments. Right now I feel like I kinda draw whatever I want to, with no focus. It’s like going to the gym without no real plan, just doing what you feel like that day (which I do, but I still have a proven workout routine that I follow, I just pick and choose from it to make every visit fun). I’m just so scared that if I structure my drawing and painting it stops being fun and becomes a chore, a must.

Damn, I must get better at learning from my mistakes. The best thing is if you get to the point where you know enough to auto correct yourself, when you see something is out of place. I feel like I just keep on doing the same mistakes over and over again when I paint. I need to experiment with different approaches. Wanna draw moooooar but needs to sleep now.

Above: a one hour pear study, a failed garlic study. A drawing made on the theme “insanity” on Tuesday’s sketch jam. Anatomy studies and some portraits of old women.

Borrowed a big anatomy book to do some studies. I wanna do my homework before the nude drawing starts next month. I think studying the bones will help me understand how to better construct the human body.

The sketch jam this week as awesome as usual. I got to chat with an great environmental artist about what makes a good artist. Just to be able to talk about the process of making art, how to improve, what kind of assignments you can do to get better. That kind of stuff. Even got invited to a speed paint group and a Google hangout for artists.

Thinking about my future. I don’t really know if or where I have a job after January ends. I just hope I don’t need to move from Malmö again. Not knowing is a bit thrilling but mostly just bad. I kinda want to have a job for longer than half a year at a time, to really get to know the project and the team. To have a chance to develop within your work. I don’t look forward to going without a job again. The three months of unemployment last summer really made its impact on me. In a very bad way. Not sure about how personal I wanna get about this.

On the top: some sketches from my visit to a coffee shop this weekend, then a ghost like robot inspired by whatever the abstract brush could help me accomplish. Last: a quick and kinda bad underwater lady. I’m kinda happy with the ghost, but the rest is crappy. I think I get happy about maybe 1/20 of all the images I paint and draw. I can get happy from drawing it, but most things I make are crappy looking in the end. There’s just so much still missing, looking wrong or just bad craftsmanship. This motivates me to get better, but it’s also very frustrating in the long run. To constantly see the flaws and to battle the feeling of wanting to give up. But then again, sometimes I browse the folder where I collect all my art for the “Learning To Draw” project, and I realize I have improved over the past 17 months I’ve been doing this. Slowly, but I’m getting better at it.

Oh my, this week as been an exhausting one. I had a very bad mail conversation with a restaurant here in Malmö. They had called me and my friends “cheap bastards” behind our back and a bunch of other stuff, and when I contacted them to clear up the misunderstanding and get an apology, they were downright threatening and patronizing and banned me from the restaurant. I’m thinking of uploading all those crazy emails they sent me, here on my blog, but not sure if I want to spend more energy on that. It’s not up to me to cure some crazy lady from ruining the reputation of her restaurant…Other than this someone pooped in the shared laundry room, which honestly made me laugh for 30 minutes. It’s just one of those situations where you don’t know if you should cry or laugh. So I chose to laugh about it. Whatever, moving out of this place two weeks!

Also, my contract with Tarsier is coming to an end soon, and I don’t really know what will happen after the 30th of January. Maybe I get to stay at Tarsier, or maybe I’m looking for something new. I would very much like to stay here in Malmö. Moving up to Stockholm (where most game dev jobs in Sweden are located) is not really an option.

A 45 minute portrait combined with a photo study at the top. Got a bit carried away, playing with my abstract brush, hehe! I find “ordinary” people so interesting and rewarding to paint. Beautiful people are of course also nice to paint, but they just don’t feel as lifelike as “real” humans with flaws, wrinkles and pores. The same goes for drawing bodies. The more distinct the body, the more fun it is to paint. To capture what makes it unique, alive.

Some drawings and studies of the human skull. I don’t know how to paint the back of the head. It turns out to be so tricky, not sure why. I’ve noticed that there should be room for another “face” at the back of an average human skull (woah that was a creepy sentence!). But I still don’t get it right : / Gonna ask a friend to pose for me. Life studies usually solve most of my drawing related issues.

Face study 1,5 hours. Felt really weird today, went home sometimes after lunch and rested a couple of hours. A friend of mine had the stomach flu last week, for four entire days, so I went home today just in case, hehe! This portrait was painted as an exercise to gain a better understanding of facial anatomy and the color of skin. I’ve been drawing a lot of skulls this weekend, trying to get a better grip of what makes up a human face, what lies beneath the skin and muscles.

Speaking of weekends, I had a very pleasant one (if you don’t think about all that packing and cleaning since I’m moving soon)! On Friday we went for an after work and ended up sitting outside, at a bar for 2 hours, just drinking and talking. Had some very interesting conversations, and when I got home I couldn’t feel my feet due to the cold Swedish winter. Luckily the bar owner was kind enough to lit the infrared warm outdoor lamps so we did not freeze to death! I guess my feet were out of reach from the hot lamps LOL. On Saturday two of my friends called and asked if I wanted to bring some vodka and head over to their place. We spent the night talking, playing games, listening to Justice and taking shots. It was truly awesome and I fell asleep happy at 03 when I got home. Those were my old pals from game dev university, happy they ended up in Malmö of all places!

Still practicing drawing those hands. A lot of the stuff I create right really looks like crap, so this is the only thing I’m showing for now. I’m making progress, but they are kinda slow. Usually that means my brain is processing drawing or painting somewhere in the unconscious part, so hopefully I’ll see the results soon. Cheers!

Above: some 60 sec poses. New year, new sessions of Malmö sketch jam! Yay! My favorite time of the week is back! I can’t understand it’s 2014 already. Time truly just flies by as you grow older, hehe.

First day at work today, after nearly two weeks of Christmas vacation. Feels good to be back, but today was also a lot of work to catch up and getting back on track again. I’ve missed my team at Tarsier, they are fun to be around <3 It’s now four months since I started working there. With work occupation a lot my my time and mind I won’t have time to draw as much as I have the past two weeks, but I will try to create something small at least every day.

Erhm, these are laying around the office, and I’m not sure if I wanna know what they are or what they are used for…

Anyways, right now I’m focusing my studies and practice on two things; hands and perspective. These are two things I suck at, and the only way to improve is to crack down on your weaknesses. Hands are also perfect to draw since I carry my own reference material with me wherever I go, which makes it so much easier! Perspective on the other hand (pun intended) is another beast. I used to see that my images looked very flat and lifeless. The thing that’s missing from a lot of them is foreshortening and a good grasp of perspective. I’ve always dreaded drawing stiff straight lines and therefore I’ve become a bit afraid of buildings, vehicles and other non-organic shapes. Invested 10 dollars in the CTRL Paint video “Perspective 1”, and so far I’ve had more revelations than I can list here. And that is just from one video! Time to start grinding the assignments from the video. If you want to learn how to draw I really, really recommend you to check out the amazing site CTRL Paint. I can honestly say I would not have made it this far and learned this much without the site. I’ve spent 30 dollars on videos from the site by now, and they’ve all been a real investment and worth every cent!

Some drawings from today. Me and my friends played some Super Smash and while I was waiting for my turn to play I took the chance to draw my friends playing, hehe! I also included two drawings from Christmas, realized I had not yet posted them here. Enjoy!

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Sara Casén

I'm Sara. This is my personal blog where I post my art and snapshots of my life, updating every sometimes. A video game developer with a past at Paradox and Tarsier Studios. Currently managing the new indie studio named Midnight Hub, together with some other cool dudes. Before co-funding Midnight Hub I ran Casen Crowd, a community management company. Fuck off, Svenssonlivet <3